The Arab-Israeli Conflict

1. The Arab-Israeli Conflict Background

2. Defining the question: • Is it a religious war between followers of Islam and Judaism? • Is it an ethnic war between two traditionally rival groups? • Is it a war of nationalist aspirations? • Is it a war of defence, in which one state is defending itself against its neighbours’ determination to destroy them? • Is it a war of territorial expansion, or an Imperial War or simply a series of random, unconnected events that have had tragic and unforeseen circumstances? • It is one – it is all! “To make the boldest outline of the past is to make Israel’s basic case. To sketch the present is to see the Arab’s plight.” Shipler in Bickerton and Klausner, A concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Prentice Hall, 2004, p.4

3. Who are the Arabs and the Jews? • Mythically a common origin: • Shem, Noah’s oldest son is regarded as the ancestor of Jews and Arabs • Arabs and Jews see themselves as descended from Abraham, and therefore as inheritors of the Promised Land.

4. The Arabs • Arabs trace their lineage back to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael born of Abraham’s handmaiden. Jews trace their lineage back to Isaac, Abraham’s first son born to his wife Sarah. • The term Arab is a term derived from the Old Testament and refers to the nomadic tribes of the central and northern Arabian Peninsula. Each tribe was headed by a Sheik. • When the Arab conquest of the Middle East took place in the 7th and 8th centuries BCE, following the founding of Islam, Arabic became the language and Islam the religion of the region. Not all peoples of the region adopted Islam or Arabic. Pocket of Christians remained here and there. Jews resisted the new conquerors.

6. The Arabs • Arabs today do not from one nation state, but like the Jews they consider themselves a people and a national group. Today there are over 125 million people from Morocco to Iraq who consider themselves as Arab. • Arabs are not a race in the commonly understood sense, nor are they a religion. • Seven million Arabs are Christian. Only one-fifth of Muslims in the world are Arab • Final definition:The term Arab can be applied to those who use Arabic as their language and identify with Arab culture and causes.

8. The Jews • Trace their origins to the 12 Semitic tribes who claim descent from Abraham and his son, Isaac. They were known as Hebrews or Israelites. • They are at once a religious group, an ethnic group and a cultural group • The Jewish language, Hebrew, is not a unifying, common language. Only about one-third of Israelis speak Hebrew and many who identify themselves as Jewish have little or no familiarity of the language. • Under Jewish law, a person who has a Jewish mother, or who has converted to Judaism, the term Jew can be applied.

10. Anti-Semitism • Anti-Semitism: an attack on Jews based on race more so than religion. • First coined by German racist William Marr in 1789. Based on the distorted Social Darwinist theories that tried to prove the superiority of the ‘Aryan’ race over the ‘inferior’, Semitic Jews.

11. Orientalism • An American and Western view of the Arab and Muslim world. • Belief that the political, economic and cultural elements of the people of the Orient (The Middle East and Asia) as inferior to the West. The West therefore has a right for hegemony or dominance over the Orient. • Orientalism views the Middle East politically despotic, economically backward and culturally decadent. • There is a tendency to overlook completely the contributions of the Middle East to the development of Western European civilisation. • Intellectual assumptions about Jews and Arabs makes an understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict more difficult.

12. Views of Each Other • Jews see Arabs as: fearsome, violent and duplicitous. • Capable of great cruelty with a fanatical disregard for human life. • Has a lust for blood and is easily manipulated by murderous leaders.

13. Arabs see Jews • The Arabs see the Jews as: violent and cowardly, regard them as aliens, outsiders and interlopers

14. JUDAISM • Foreshadows both Christianity and Islam. • Central belief: The chosen people, • God’s instructions: The Torah (or Pentateuch), the Five Books of Moses. • Specifies the Promised Land – given by God to the Jews. Much greater land area than modern Israel today.

15. The Jews and the Promised Land • The search for the promise land under Moses after the expulsion from Egypt • The Kingdoms of David and Solomon: 1000 BCE • 721BCE Samaria was conquered by the Assyrians • 586BCE The Jews of Judea were expelled to Babylonia. • In 538 BCE The Persians restored the Jews to their promised land and built a second temple in Jerusalem • Many remained in Babylon and in northern Egypt. • The Jews lived autonomously in Judea under a succession of foreign rulers, most notably the Roman Empire until 70 CE. • The Jews rose in revolt against the Romans. They responded by destroying the Temple and expelling many Jews (many subjected to slavery) from Judea. • In 135 CE Emperor Hadrian defeated the last of the Jewish armies and renamed Judea, Syria Palestina.

18. The Diaspora • Jews continued to inhabit the region, but as the years went on and persecution first from the Roman’s and then Christian Rome, Jews outside of what was once Judea out numbered those left in the region. • There evolved three distinct group by the Middle Ages • The Ashkenazim: migrated to Central and later Eastern Europe • The Shephardin: Spain and North Africa • The Mizrahi: remained in Babylonia • Referred to as the Diaspora , the dispersal.

19. Second Class Citizens • Suffered persecution and marginalisation wherever they went. Especially in the Christian world. Jews were driven out of England by force by Richard the Lionheart and the Russian Empire persecuted the Jews continuously and often brutally. • In the Islamic world, Jews like Christians were given second class citizen status. They become a tolerated minority. No Islamic ruler ever instituted a policy of expulsion or mass murder. • Misconception that all Jews were gone from the region as a result of the Roman Expulsion of 70CE • Today: largest Jewish communities are in the US, the former Soviet Union and Israel